LocalGov 2.0

Dan Slee has been doing some great blogging about the use of Flickr in local government. In his latest post, he outlines the service and provides a host of examples of Flickr uses in Local Gov, from history projects to documenting the daily life of a public servant.

Andrew Beeken shares his story of the evolution of social media use at Lincoln Council. Like a lot of places, it's not a big bang, but an iterative journey. Starting with YouTube and moving on to Twitter and Flickr and beyond. And it's not just about tools, but about approach, too. From use of a few platforms and a slightly subversive feel towards becoming an integrated approach for communications and engagement.

He writes: "2010 in general saw more of a sea change in the way social media was perceived in the organisation. Instead of being a bit of an insidious channel where people could talk about us behind our backs, it was now a very real and valid way of bringing the discussion “to the people” as it were."

Earlier this year, following the snows in the beginning months, Dan Slee wrote up how Walsall council had been using social media to cope and communicate with the wintry weather. In the unusual Nov/December fall of snow, Walsall have expanded their use of social media to inform local people of changes to existing services and how winter services like gritting were coming along.

And Walsall is not alone in employing better web use and social media to help people in the snow. I've just heard from Vicky Sargent of Socitm Insight on their quick review of snow related web use (blog post here).

Central Bedfordshire is one of those newly created councils, so letting people know what's going on, who to talk to and creating conversations is key and probably a bit of challenge, too.

Central Beds has a spiffy website and an engagement platform (based on WordPress) called Let's Talk Central. It's firmly entrenched in the positive getting people to talk about what they like about their area, with opportunities to say how they could be made even better.

Alongside, this they're employing cheap and free new media tools - like Flickr (where I spotted they won a prestigious public loo award), YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

You can see them describe how they did it in the comments here (requires CoP login).

Dan Slee has blogged about how Walsall Council has used Flickr and its local community to spruce up its web pages. He has step by step information about what they did and what kind of things you need to consider as well as other helpful links.

If you're proud of your area and proud of your local people, this is a great way to show that.

Flickr is an online image sharing website, that is as much about social networking around images as it is an image repository. Just about every area I've ever looked for already has a Flickr group dedicated to sharing images about that place.

Me, I love a library blog. It just seems such a natural fit. I've just spotted the Plymouth Libraries blog which is focused on reading for the Under-5s. It's got reviews of children's book and links to local reading-based activities for the kids. And it's written by a bear. BookStart Bear, who's been sharing his/her/its (?) travels through a Flickr stream.

Like many council museums services, Winchester is using a range of well-known social media channels - like Flickr to promote its collections and events. Not so much on the social media, but it does have a beautiful website helping visitors real and virtual explore its collections.

Winchester Museums services was also recently celebrated for small scale innovations in the NESTA Small is Beautiful: Innovation in Local Government discussion paper. According to the LGIU blog:

Winchester Museum Services project ‘Using new technology to engage with customers’ was a pioneer in harnessing new social media technology to change the way its staff work. 360 degree virtual tours were produced to improve pre-visit information for those with disabilities, due to fears they may be deterred from visiting by not knowing what physical obstacles they would face at the museum on arrival. Members of staff also trained to record podcasts on exhibitions, providing interest for those with visual impairments.

Many museums are using Flickr groups to help promote their collections. I love that some of the big museums in the UK (e.g. Science, British Museum, Natural History, V&A) seem to have a free for all approach to photography, that is generally allowed unless expressly forbidden. The V&A in particular has taken an active approach to managing images from their museum, inviting images to its Flickr group.

Smaller museums and those supported or run by local authorities actually seem to take a more controlled approach to photography, probably missing a trick in terms of promotion of its collections and special exhibitions.

Walsall Museums has recently held an event where it not only opened up its collection to local photographers (those already sharing their photos in a Walsall Flickr group), but opened up its stores as well. Dan Slee of Walsall Council outlines the agreements reached on copyright of the images and access on his blog. This is cool, because it's not only sharing images of the collection, but reaching the bits that most people never get to see.

Derbyshire Libraries is using a Facebook page to communicate with readers and residents about books, events and culture. Their largest library at Chesterfield already uses Flickr - and these will link together.

Sarah Lay (@sarahlay), a member of the Knowledge Hub advisory group shared this example today at our meeting.

Devon is sharing unidentified images from its archives on Flickr. In this example, they weren't quite sure what and where this ruin was. Someone saw this one and identified it as Gedleigh Council, they checked it out and yep, that's what it was.

Case solved!